The narrator of Below the Styx, publisher Martin Frobisher, is in the Melbourne City Remand Centre awaiting trial for a murder which he claims he did not commit. He is accused of striking his wife, Coralie, with an epergne (a large, heavy and intricately detailed table centrepiece) and then suffocating her with a cushion. While he freely admits hitting her (with as ‘little force’ as he could muster) and subsequently fleing the scene, the bloodied cusion which smothered her remains a mystery to him. This is the story of the events and final extremem provocation that brought this gentle, cultivated man (who would shoo spiders and earwigs out of the way rather than harm them) to commit the murderous act. The book takes us from the time of Martin’s first meeting with Australian-born sisters, Corolie and Madeleine, in a Left Bank hotel in Paris, through to his subsequent marriage to the ambitious, shallow and increasingly caustic Coralie. It tells of their lives in England, their return to Australia and the expected marriage of flighty Madeleine to the very tedious but ever-dependable Rollo. While Coralie and Martin with their increasingly comfortable life in Toorak give the appearance of a happy, well-suited couple—the perfect guests for inclusion at any dinner party—Martin is harbouring many dark secrets. Just one person, other than Martin’s solicitor and Rollo, visits him in the Remand Centre: his research assistant, Petra. Petra is increasingly baffled by the task she is set of uncovering every little-known detail of the life of the 19th-century author Marcus Clarke. Is Martin looking for solace from the man who wrote For the Term of his Natural Life while awaiting his sentence? Historical facts about Marcus Clarke’s life and times, and excerpts from his books and letters, are seamlessly interwoven through the telling of Martin’s modern-day story. This is an intriguing, through-provoking and complex novel. It is also extremely amusing and beautifully written, with passages and descriptions that demand to be savoured, noted and re-read. I can’t wait to get back for a second reading. This is the fourth novel by Michael Meehan, who won the New South Wales Premier’s Award for Fiction in 2000 for Salt of Broken Tears.

Susan Watt is manager at The Next Chapter Books, Wahroonga, New South Wales. This review first appeared in the March issue of Boookseller+Publisher magazine.